02-12-24, 08:19
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Joe Biden Issues Heartfelt Full And Unconditional Pardon to Son Hunter
US President Joe Biden Issues Full And Unconditional Pardon to Son Hunter Who Was Prosecuted For Political Reasons
The president and supporters argue Hunter Biden would never have been charged were it not for his name and any father might have done the same.
The Guardian 2 DEC 2024
A loving act of mercy by a father who has already known much sorrow? Or a hypocritical political manoeuvre reminiscent of his great foe? Maybe both can be true.
Joe Bidens announcement on Sunday that he had pardoned his son Hunter, who is facing sentencing in two criminal cases, is likely to have been the product of a Shakespearean struggle between head and heart.
On the one hand, Biden is one of the last great institutionalists in Washington. From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Departments decision-making, he said in an unusually direct and personal statement on Sunday. To undermine the separation of powers goes against every fibre of his political being.
On the other hand, Biden is nothing without family. His speeches are peppered with references to his parents. As a senator, he once took a train from Washington to Wilmington, Delaware, so he could blow out the candles on a birthday cake for his eight-year-old daughter, Ashley, at the station, then cross the platform and take the next train back to work.
Biden was profoundly shaped by the death of his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden, and 13-month-old daughter Naomi in a car accident and, much later, the death of his son Beau from brain cancer. In that context, Hunters status as the first child of a sitting president to face criminal charges will have pained his father in what Ernest Hemingway called the broken places
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